


Locksley Hall

by Anonymous



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Afterlife, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-01
Updated: 2007-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:00:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26193046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Kudos: 1
Collections: Anonymous





	Locksley Hall

_Forward, let the stormy moment fly and mingle with the Past.  
I that loathed, have come to love him. Love will conquer at the  
last._

_Locksley Hall Sixty Years After - Alfred Lord Tennyson_

He stands in front of the Whomping Willow, now frozen in time as if Peter had pushed the knot again, and they were all sneaking off to plan the next prank, the next adventure, a next tryst. There is something beautiful in it, as he has never seen before.  
To the left, a path he can not particularly recall, but instinctively knows leads to Hogwarts, to safe walls, a comfortable bed, a kind man who had done so much for him, and this too appears more fantastical, more keenly constructed than what he might have called the “real thing,” once. 

The last thing he remembers is spells flying, fighting, Harry, death, excitement, terror, Nymphadora, Voldemort, a photograph, Ted, all these things—and them strangely seeming vague, insubstantial now. 

He has a choice, and he wonders if he understands. As a werewolf, recognized for the first time as a human, his life started with acceptance to Hogwarts, a place of magic, safety, and refuge. But what would Remus Lupin’s life have amounted to if that was it, if he simply went to school, and passed through unstirred by anything but a simple will to disprove those who would condemn him? Was treated as a human because only the teachers could know he wasn’t, out of everyman’s ignorance?  
As a person—as someone real, someone waiting to be woken up, to feel, to think, to live with abandon and love—his life started down the tunnel, a place of fear, despair, painful memories, but also the blossoming of friendship, of James, Peter, Sirius, oh, Sirius.  
Acceptance with knowledge. Life with love.  
Haunted by all his troubles, his sheer terror; but every shred of happiness that had made Remus Lupin Remus Lupin, waits through that tunnel as well. 

Hogwarts beckons him, guarantees protection, comfort, but hell all if he’s not feeling reckless, and he turns to the ominous passage beneath the Willow, he turns to the right and takes the first step forward, and then the second. And as he runs through the tunnel he laughs wildly, the years stripping away, while everything suffuses with light. 

And he knows that life is just beginning, quicker and easier than sleep. 


End file.
